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Clay and many magazine people told me not to include a lesbian article in the first issue—and so, of course, we did.

-Gloria Steinem on the first issue of Ms.

You should read this New York Magazine article “How Do You Spell Ms., An Oral History of Ms. Magazine,” because Gloria Steinem is fucking awesome, and revolutionary and not afraid to speak her mind, but also because I think (especially when I see a young woman at a Halloween party dressed in a corset, a micro mini skirt, like we are talking a skirt with a hemline that hit mid cheek, and glue dripped down her cheeks to look like semen–semen, people!)* that many women of my generation and many more women of the next generation have forgotten not only how far we’ve come toward equality and how hard the women who brought us here have worked, but also, how far we have yet to go. Need to be reminded? Take a look at these pie charts showing the coverage of female vs male authors in the glossy literary magazines. The New Yorker reviewed three times as many books by male authors last year. Three times. Annoying. Want to get in on the conversation? Here is a list of women-centered blogs also from the New York Magazine.

*Of course I think that a woman should be able to wear whatever she pleases in public, covering or uncovering as much skin as she would like, but this girl took the slutty Halloween costume to an entirely new level. What on earth made her want to spend an evening with glue on her face? When asked what she was dressed as, she actually kneeled down in front of a man. I am not making this up. It made me want to scratch my eyes out.